Former SC lawmaker’s scramble to get Afghan interpreter’s wife, baby out of Kabul
In the final days of the massive U.S. airlift to remove American citizens and Afghan allies from Taliban-run Kabul, South Carolina’s James Smith is working to make sure those he served with are on the last planes out.
Smith, a former state lawmaker and Afghan War veteran, has followed the chaotic scenes of those desperate to escape the country with mounting dread, trying to personally locate his former colleagues still in the country and ensure they make it onto those planes.
Smith is one of several Afghan veterans, contractors, aid workers or former spies stepping in to help the rush of Afghan evacuations since the Taliban overran the capital city of Kabul on Aug. 15, totally displacing the existing government, military and police and spreading panic through much of the population.
“I’m one small cog in a very large wheel, working together to ID U.S. citizens, green-card holders, SIV (special immigrant visa) applied and approved people,” Smith said of the evacuation efforts. “In my experience, the Taliban will try to frustrate our efforts, so we’re trying to help get them in the gate (at the airport).”
Even before the rapid collapse of Afghanistan in recent weeks, it was perilous for Afghan interpreters and other holders of the special immigrant visas available to America’s local allies to make it to the United States. Americans are now rushing to move people out of the Kabul airport.
One of Smith’s interpreters during his time in the country attempted a perilous journey out of Afghanistan in 2015, but drowned when the boat he was traveling in capsized off the coast of Greece. Another — whom The State is not identifying out of security concerns — did make it out, first on a student visa to Turkey and then eventually finishing his special immigrant processing in Europe before he made it to the United States in 2016.
He later married an Afghan woman, had a child back in Afghanistan and hoped to move them to the U.S. later. But later didn’t arrive before the Taliban overran the Afghan capital on Aug. 15, taking advantage of the withdrawal of American troops and the swift collapse of the Afghan government and the local army that the U.S. spent 20 years building up.
A young man who was still a child when the Americans forced the Taliban out of power the first time, the interpreter met Smith when he joined up with the U.S. Army straight out of high school, during Smith’s 2007-08 tour in Afghanistan.
“He knew the importance not only of the language, but to get his help with the culture, the background, what threats there were,” Smith said.
The interpreter told his mother he had a job in more-secure Kabul, when instead he was on patrol with Smith’s troops in a more dangerous part of the country.
“I wanted to see, ‘why is Afghanistan in this situation? Why can’t we be a normal country?’ the interpreter told The State. “I wanted to go see these people and find out why the Taliban is doing this, why they were killing innocent people, and why we were fighting this war.”
Once he was in America, the interpreter thought his young family would join him eventually, but like many they were surprised by how quickly the country was overwhelmed.
“Down at the soldier level, they were incredibly brave,” Smith said of the Afghan soldiers he served with. “But when there’s no will from the senior leadership, when the president and the generals bail on you, the solider is not going to be willing to fight.”
The young mother and child ended up among the thousands who gathered at the Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, the last piece of the country under U.S. control, hoping to join one of the military flights carrying Americans and their allies out of the country.
Despite having a valid U.S. visa, the young family had to wait in the vast crowd at the airport before they could get through. Smith used his Afghan contacts to send men to protect them in the uncertain days after the fall of Kabul — especially as it was uncertain the Taliban would even allow a woman to be outside of her home unaccompanied by a man.
“I’m following down to real-time movements on Facebook messenger, and it feels like I’m right back there,” Smith said. “I’m looking at pictures and describing what she’s wearing so people can find her.”
Before they could reach the gate, they ran into Taliban guards who were mocking the crowd of asylum seekers. “You’re losers! The Americans don’t want you!” Smith repeated.
Back in America, the former interpreter was consumed with stress, unable to work or eat. He said he got into a car wreck because he was so focused on his family’s safety.
“I couldn’t even sit down, I just stood up by the phone,” he said. “In all my Army experience, this was the most scared I had ever been, because it’s my wife, my son, and they’re in the hands of people I have no choice but to trust.”
While U.S. and other international flights continue from the Kabul airport, the Taliban are in control of the surrounding area and have ultimate control over who makes it through. Smith said Americans at the gate are having to check for people outside with Taliban standing guard around the perimeter.
“If you’re not right there, within meters, you just don’t go through,” said Smith, who served 22 years in the state House and was the Democratic nominee for governor in 2018.
While the Taliban have not interfered with U.S. evacuation efforts so far, Taliban fighters have reportedly searched for anyone with ties to the U.S. military and have stopped and beaten some people on their way to the airport.
A Taliban spokesman said on Tuesday that the militant group would no longer allow Afghan nationals to leave the country, The Washington Post reported. On Thursday, warnings of a potential terrorist attack were followed by two explosions in Kabul, including at one of the Kabul airport’s main gates that killed 13 Americans and at least 60 Afghans.
The interpreter’s wife and son were lucky enough to eventually make it out earlier this week, after more than a dozen failed attempts to reach the gate. Smith helped them find a hotel and connected them with a group transporting cleared individuals to the airport.
They were able to get on a flight to another Middle Eastern country, where they will soon be reunited with their husband and father in the U.S. It will be only the second time the interpreter has seen his young son, since COVID-19 travel restrictions meant he couldn’t return to Afghanistan for his birth last year.
But not everyone is out. Smith knows of another man, a U.S. citizen, in the city of Kandahar, what Smith calls the “spiritual capital” of the Taliban in the south of the country, some 300 miles from the organized evacuation flights out of the Kabul airport.
Smith said the man had been told his young daughters would have to marry Taliban fighters, unless they can get them out of the country. But time is running out, with the Biden administration committed to completing its withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of August.
Even knowing his immediate family are safe, the former interpreter still worries about his friends and family back home, and what future they may have now that the Taliban and their much more restrictive view of Afghans’ lives have taken over.
“These are nice people who only ask for a peaceful life,” he said.
This story was originally published August 27, 2021 at 9:56 AM.
.jpg)